


Heavy with love

by Cactusepique



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cuddling, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Telepathy, twissy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-07-28
Packaged: 2018-04-11 15:42:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4441637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cactusepique/pseuds/Cactusepique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He had told Martha he would know the Master the moment he would lay eyes on him. No matter the face. Well, this was still true, and he just knew it was her."</p><p>The tenth Doctor meet Missy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heavy with love

He had woken up feeling trapped. 

At once he had tried to squirm out of the embrace, blinded and panicked, but the grip on him was firm, holding him in place. Legs were entangled with his, an arm draped over him, hair tucked beneath his chin, and a face was nuzzling into his neck. The TARDIS hummed in a soothing manner around him, banishing the gloom. In the warm, newly found dim light he finally made sense of the silhouette crushing him. A woman in an Edwardian nightgown, with dark braided hair and an angular face. She was still fast asleep. 

He had told Martha he would know the Master the moment he would lay eyes on him. No matter the face. Well, this was still true, and he just knew it was her. Ignoring the mad roaring of his hearts in his ears, he shifted so he could place a hand above her breasts. He could indeed feel them, these two hearts beating steadily beneath the fabric. Carefully, he lifted a hand to stroke her jaw, then meet her hight cheekbones, revelling in the natural coolness of Gallifreyan skin. 

She sighed in her sleep and he abruptly stopped. If she woke up the quiet moment would shatter, she would break the world apart and he would have to run fast enough to stop her. For now she looked so harmless. It had been so long since he had just hold her in his arms, without them struggling against each other. Since the nightmares of their childhood it seemed, and the storms on Gallifrey. 

_Master_ , the word echoed endlessly in his skull, melodic and obsessional. _Mistress,_ probably, now that she was female. Part of him yearned for the restful time to stretch and last forever, and another part of him was already thinking ahead, all anticipating fear and rage for the damages she was bound to cause. Still he was relieved to see her alive and well, and he pushed away the harrowing memory of the man she had once been dying in his arms. He had lighted a funeral pyre for her, watched as the flames had consumed her body, knowing there was no way back, but still hoping this wasn't the end. 

He wasn't even angry. At the very moment he had defeated her and her Toclafanes she had already been forgiven, and he suspected Harold Saxon had been ages ago for her. Foolishly, he hoped she had changed since then. That day on the Valiant she hadn't chosen death to avoid imprisonment aboard the TARDIS. She would have found a way to escape, she always did. She had hold back her regeneration to scare him, hurt him. Moreover, to avoid facing his raw need to change her. Still she had regenerated again. She had come back. It stunned him, that phoenix-like ability she always seemed to have. A beautiful and a terrifying thing all at once. 

His sleep had been incredibly deep and peaceful, and now he knew he owned that to her. Even tough he feared she had trapped him in her web, lured him to serenity to better break him later. The TARDIS had let her in, let her find his bedroom, trusted her to not harm him, and he wondered. Nestling as close as possible against her, careful not to wake her up, he breathed her in, and she smelled like smoke and fireworks. Did she burn something recently? Reduced whole worlds to flames and ashes? 

Even the most cautious minds let mental nonsense seep through their shields during their rest, and he could feel her contentment at his touch as he was daring enough to play with a strand of hair that had escaped the braid. However, her mental hum was a bit too loud, as if she was completely unguarded, which was unusual and completely reckless for her standards. It undid him a little, to play with the idea of her feeling safe enough in his arms for that. 

He studied her. The red lipstick matched the tainted nails of the hand tucked between them, extremely contoured cheeks led to penciled eyebrows, and there were traces of blue eyeshadow on her eyelids. He imagined her, applying the make-up with the same meticulousness most of her previous self had shown. She would wake up eventually, and he pondered how she would be as his eyes followed the curves of her body, hidden by the plain and thick white fabric of her nightgown. Evil and witty, charismatic as always, that was for sure. Maybe, if he was lucky, also a tiny bit less lunatic than the last time around. 

There were wrinkles around her eyes, just like the old days, when they were both younger but looked older. She was female now, but he had only ever seen her as male, and he wondered if it was a conscious choice or just randomness. Sometimes the Mistress had proved control over his regenerations. If truth was to be told, his old friends had always been more talented than him for this sort of things, as well as piloting a TARDIS or hypnotizing people. 

She wasn't waking up. Maybe she was getting her first sleep in ages, and he marvelled at why she had chosen his bed and his arms for that. It made him hope that maybe she had finally understood what he had told her; the only thing they had was each other. Maybe she was just as lonely as himself since he had lost Donna and gotten bored with Queen Elisabeth. _His lonely monster_ , he mused. 

She stirred. Seconds later her eyes fluttered open and his breath caught in his throat. He hadn't expected them to be so clear and blue. So beautiful. She blinked lazily and he waited, shuddering in expectation until those icy eyes were boring into him. He waited for the madness in her still sleepy frame to reveal itself, waited for her to grasp him in the firm grip of her tiny hands and rip his chest open with her red nails. He braced himself for the chaos her presence usually created. 

Smiling nonchalantly, she only nudged back against him, dark hair and soft skin rubbing against his cheeks and neck, and he didn't know what to do with his arms. Eventually he put them tentatively around her, and she hummed in approval. She had apparently decided to allow him a few more moments of peace before the turmoil. The fear of losing her again was so strong that he was afraid to move, afraid to ask the questions he knew she wouldn't answer. He aimed for casualness. 

"Is it Mistress now?" he asked in a murmur, and he used English. They hadn't resumed their native language during that year on the Valiant, talking rarely and in raw snarls and desperate pleads, miles apart from each other and surrounded by humans. 

She smiled and he knew her answer. "I like it when you use my name," she replied, proving him right, and Gallifreyan fell from her tongue easily. That long-lost, mighty language only them shared, her voice a melodic rumble in the silence of his ship. The cadence, the rhythms of her voice hadn't changed much, elegant syllables stumbling from her mouth and echoing through him loudly. 

Her breath was hot against his neck when she spoke again, and he shivered. "At least you recognized me this time. Future you was clueless." He didn't care that she came from his future, crossing her own timeline in a sinuous path. He was basking in the sound of her voice. "Maybe you failed for the perception filter hidden in my Mary Poppins' hat." 

The Doctor couldn't help but chuckled lightly. "You wore a flowery hat? With fake cherries?"

"Got the whole Victorian mad nanny outfit." 

He almost giggled, because terms like "Victorian" could only be translated roughly into Gallifreyan, and her pick for an equivalent was imaginative. He was gleeful while she just looked weary, voice still heavy with sleep. Her Harold Saxon shaped self had been insufferable, slipping away from his grip every time he had tried to get an hold on him, backing away every time he had hoped to make him listen. Now she sounded calmer and he just wanted his friend back, the comforting presence of another Time Lord beside him. "Why did you hide from me anyway?" 

"Fun," she answered simply. "It didn't hide the two hearts tough, and left you quite startled, I could tell. You thought I was dead, again. Bless." 

So that was it, she would leave him again and she would make him forget this encounter. He pushed the thoughts away as a terrible idea came to his mind. "Why are you here and not with my future self?" He swallowed hard and his arms tightened around her. "Am I dead?"

She rolled her eyes at him, allowing herself a flicker of annoyance. "Of course you're not, you silly boy. But you're all grumpy and no fun at all. I just wanted a version of you who would be happy to see me," she mumbled against his chest. 

"Cuddling then? No evil plans? It doesn't sound like you."

"Are you complaining, now?" she scolded. "Do give me some time, love," she pouted and the term of endearment sounded weirdly right in her mouth. "I've spent the last years crafting you the best present ever," she elaborated quite proudly. Then and to his surprise, her voice dropped and there it was again, that weariness he had already sensed in her. "And you threw my gift at my face with no respect whatsoever for my work." 

There had been a time when he would have just told her that she was insane and evil. Told her that her so called gift was probably one of her usual screwed up plan which had just backfired in her face, once again. Not today. Today he thought he could live with the unavoidable contradiction that came with loving her and condemning her crimes. "It was a birthday present," she added and he arched a suspicious eyebrow at her. "And yes, I do remember your birthday!"

He leaned in tentatively. This was something that wasn't meant to happen between them, but he brushed his lips over hers anyway. "Shall we make up for that?" he breathed before he claimed her mouth. 

Martha had asked if they had been lovers, after she had seen him crying over the Mistress' body. _"You watch too much telly,"_ he had lied. 

Leaving the Mistress' shoulder blades his hands cradled her face, and he brushed briefly the hairline before they came to her temples, rubbing the soft skin that hid the extratemporal lobe, this glorious little spot that made telepathy possible. 

Then everything went too fast. 

She tensed in his embrace, but he only thought it was in expectation. Would he have been able to see her eyes he would have seen the alarm in them. Should it have been the other way around the Mistress' touch telepathy would have already picked up on the warning, but he wasn't as gifted as her, and blinded by lust and need. He found her mind open and unveiled to him, and she gasped his childhood name, "Theta." She wriggled against him and nearly yelled, but he had already sunk in greedily. 

At first he noticed the drums were gone, but the silence was total and deafening. Something had gone wrong. Her consciousness had withdrawn to some dark corner of her mind, hiding from him, and he didn't dare to delve deeper. When he called her and got no answer he started to panic. He was backing away when her mind lashed out, screaming in terror and agony, her mental finger nails clawing at him as she kicked him out. Only then, in his messy, hurried retreat he noticed the complete absence of her once formidably strong mental shields. 

She hadn't invited him in, she just couldn't close the doors anymore. 

He came back to his own consciousness, cursing himself. She was shaking violently, and her blown wide eyes didn't seem to see him. He grabbed hold of her, clutched her to him and waited for her tremors to stop. She didn't even fight him, and it worried him beyond measure. 

This version of him was good at giving comfort, and he scrupulously undid her braid to comb through her hair. He reached her scalp, and his dexterous fingers languorously caressed and gently dug in, kneading and rubbing. It was a Gallifreyan art, these neck and head massages. Even with something as primal as flesh his people had always remained obsessed with minds and brains. The seat of the soul was believed to be the cranium. Most people were affected by codes and rules, taboos, traditions and beliefs, even regarding something as individual as sensuality. For once he was exactly like most people, or maybe it was just putting some useful skills at use. He felt her gradually relaxing under his helping hands. 

She let out a sob. Relieved and concerned, he hugged her, securing her. He didn't really know what to do with a crying Mistress, and he hoped she wouldn't make him pay for witnessing a weakness in her. Anyhow she seemed to accept the sympathy he was eagerly giving. 

"Who did that to you?" he requested once she seemed better, and he did his best to hide the anger that had risen inside him. The Mistress had been good at mind submission, and she had enjoyed it, relishing in taking control and leading an onslaught, even basking in the turmoil she was provoking inside one's head. As far as he knew she had been manipulating people or collecting information, and she had never gone as far as wracking someone's mind. She had gotten a taste of her own medicine, but he would never say she had deserved it.

"It could only be the Time Lords," he mused aloud when she didn't answer. "But why? And how? They're gone, they're all dead."

"They're not," she rasped, and it was good to hear her voice. "They'll try to escape from the Time Lock. It hasn't happened for you yet." 

"You can't tell me this," he gasped. 

"I know," she said softly and for the first time since she had woken up her hands moved on him. She cupped his face and stroked his cheek gently with her thumbs, in a gesture he found both affectionate and strangely threatening. "I'm going to make you forget that we ever met anyway."

He didn't want to consign this to oblivion, the woman she would become, that bed and the tenderness she was capable of. Her fingers messed with his hair, tipped colored nails brushing his skin. "Paradoxes, foreknowledge and all that. We weren't meant to meet. Unlike you I'm not a fool, and I won't risk blowing up the universe."

"Why did you came then?" he chided. 

"I told you," she just said. "I wanted to see you." 

She pressed herself closer to him and he inhaled sharply, a long forgotten desire reawakening inside him and settling low in his belly. "Then you can told me," he whispered, refusing to be sidetracked. "What happened? Did they come back?" 

"No," she answered, all serious again. "You know how the Hight Council was at the end of the war. They went mad," she said as if she was the sane one, "we stopped them." 

"What happened to you?" 

"I went back into the infernal loops of the Time War with them," she murmured, and her blue eyes were gazing wildly at him, lost in remembrance. "To save you. And for revenge," she continued, answering his inarticulate question. "The drums. That was their fault. They did this to me." She took a ragged breath and he reached for her hands. He knew how much the war had scared her, to the point of making her run to the end of the universe and turn herself into a human. "I killed Rassillon. I got to do it several times before they stopped me." 

"That's why they broke you," he finished for her. She nodded. Obvisouly Rassillon would have kept his hands clean. Mental torture was the perfect way. "How did you escape? You should have died when I destroyed Gallifrey." 

The kiss took him by surprise, but he melted easily into it. It was ravenous and suited them both. When she broke it, cheeks flushed and lips swollen, she was grinning widely. "The thing is, you stubborn idiot," she trailed off, delighted by his offended look, "you didn't burn our home."

Something twisted and jolted inside him. After all she was insane, and she was probably playing with him. He was her favorite toy and she would love to hurt him deeply. "You're lying. Don't you dare joking about Gallifrey with me, don't you ever dare!" he fulminated and he fought the urge to slap her. He wanted to pull and yank at these long hair in a fit of anger, but she didn't seem frightened by the rage written in his every features, and she broke into a maddeningly patient smile.

"You didn't remember using the Moment, did you?" 

He was lost for a moment. She was right, all he remembered was walking to the farm, the heavy weight of the Moment on his shoulders, and the resolution he had made when he had craved those words in the wall of Arcadia. No more. 

"What do you mean?" 

"I'll show you."'

The Mistress had always been one to believe that showing things were better than explaining them. Her mind sought his and he let her lead, afraid of hurting her, amazed that she was still able to bear a mental contact. _It's different when you're doing it willingly,_ she whispered in his mind. _You scared me. I haven't yet learnt to stop being afraid,_ she added, but he wasn't sure if she had actually spoken these words, or if it was more like something he had simply sensed in her. 

For a few seconds he thought she was projecting images inside his mind, before he realized she was actually bringing back memories he had forgotten. Meeting one's previous self had always that impact he reckoned, as he caught glimpses of himself meeting the man he had been during the Time War. 

Three men in a barn. 

His warrior self. Himself. A future one. 

The Moment. 

Their three hands joined above it. Ready to pull the trigger. 

Then a girl, Clara, with tears in her eyes. Stopping the one with the bowtie. Stopping them all. 

Themselves, all of them, trying the impossible to save Gallifrey. 

He broke away and the memory shatter. He clung to it, knowing the Mistress would take it away from him in the end. He let it washed over him, warmed him, that wondeful knowledge that he had tried to save his home rather than destroyed it. Then he clung to his old friend, babbling delightful words in her hair. He was aware that she was playing with him, basking in his gleefulness and gratitude, all the while knowing she would leave him as miserable as he was before she came. But it was something so much like her, to give him hope and happiness before snatching them away from him. Still, he couldn't bring himself to care. Not now. 

"Do you want to know the best part of it?" she teased. "I've gifted you that girl, the one who stopped you, as a companion." 

"Did you?" he asked. "Why? Surely you didn't know she would save Gallifrey." 

She took a moment to answer, and he didn't miss the look of sadness that crossed her face. 

"She was perfect for you. She was exactly what you needed. I just knew you were going to love her." 

"You don't know what's good for me," he contradicted her. He had nothing else to say. 

"I do," she retorted. "Kind, generous, funny, brave, adventurous. Human, preferably female, pretty and from Earth, Great Brittain, in the twenty-first century," she recited in an accusatory fashion. 

She eyed him cautiously, daring him to say she was wrong. There was that hint of sadness mixed with anger and resignation on her face again. 

"But it's not enough. It will never be enough, because those companions aren't you," he admitted. 

That seemed to leave her shell shocked for the briefest moment. Then a small smile blossomed on her lips. "Really?"

She sounded so unsure, so insecure. It only encouraged him to go further. 

"There's all the shared past, of course," he began, "our childhood, and the promises we made to each other. There's the fact that I will never stop caring for you," he trailed off leisurely, relishing the way her lips parted in surprise. The way she shivered when he brushed the fabric of her gown out of the way to press a kiss to her collarbone. "I will never stop needing you, craving your presence." His hands sought beneath the bed covers to find the hem of her frock. She sat on the bed to help him as he pulled it off, his hands ghosting over her skin as he went. 

She was naked underneath, and there was an inequality because he was still wearing his pyjamas, yet she didn't try to undress him. She tilted her head back obediently when his mouth lashed on her neck. It was nothing he hadn't done to Reinette or Rose, but this was the Mistress, and it was different. More dangerous, more intense, more important. A shudder ran down his spine. He stroked her back and she arched into him. His mouth glided lower, aiming for her breasts. 

"You nearly killed me" she whispered.

"What?" he mumbled against her skin. 

"I suppose you've grown tired of me in the end," she said. "Clara, your companion, she asked you to kill me. I can't tell if you would have done it or not, because I teleported myself away. You were holding the weapon the wrong way, but you're an idiot, and it's not proving you wouldn't have done it." 

He did his best to make it sounded like her fears were baseless. "I will never be able to hurt you, no matter how much you hurt me or the people I love." 

This wasn't a lie. 

He looked up a her, and then he was kissing her again. Soft and light as rain falling on Earth. 

"Go on," he challenged between kisses. "Bit me. Hurt me. Rip me apart. Break your revenge on me."

He pulled back. "It won't stop me." 

"From what?" 

_Loving you,_ he tought faintly, but couldn't force the words out. 

"Touching you like this," he said instead. His hands found their way through her hair. "Mine. Wonderful. Brilliant," he uttered.  


"You love me," she said, breathless. 

"Lie down," he replied instead of confirming it. 

He avoided her gaze as she did as she was told. Then he quickly divested himself of his clothes and followed her. He rested his head against her chest, felt her hearts beating. Steady, comforting. 

"Find that man, the man I will become. Talk to him," he voiced quietly. "Go to Gallifrey with him." 

She wound her fingers through his hair, pulled so he would look at her. 

"You know where Gallifrey is, don't you?" he asked. 

She didn't answer and he nosed her neck, sought her mind tentatively, pushing clear images of love and peace and home into it. "May I?" 

She pulled him closer and claimed his mouth in a fierce, brutal kiss. She bit his lips this time, her fingers leaving marks on his back. She drew in a sharp breath as his mind burst across her most intimate boundaries, and her nails dug into his skin. 

"Trust me," he breathed out and parted her legs to make room for him between them. He soothed the raw edges of her abused psyche with a mental caress, while his hands discovered her body. 

She pulled at him impatiently, and then he was pushing in, mind and body, slowly. He felt a resistance, her tense body blocking him the way, and he backed up, his mind hovering at the threshold of hers. 

"How long has it been?" he inquired warily. 

"Shut up," she said harshly, and she was pulling him closer again, shifting her hips against his to find a better angle. 

"No," he told her, "no." And again, and again and again, until she stopped trying to urge him on. 

She cursed him and he shushed her. His hands came back to her, caressing her arms, her hair. 

A sight, almost a sob and he felt her fingers against his temples. 

Then the dark engulfed him. 

 

 

He woke up a few hours later, lost and dizzy. He remembered dreaming of the Master, and of Gallifrey. He remembered putting his pyjamas on before going to sleep, and yet he was naked in the bed. 

He sighted deeply, and rolled over onto his stomach. 

The sheets smelled of something familiar, yet he couldn't pinpoint it. 

 

 

"You went to see my tenth self," he said. 

"How do you know?" 

"Your scent. Citrus, with a elusive hint of honey. You left it all over the sheets, and I remembered it when you were unconscious on the UNIT plane and I was waiting for you to wake up." 

"What else do you remember?" 

"Everything," he answered in a low voice. "You know how memory is, just a little clue can unlock everything." 

She snorted. "What do we do then?" 

He reached for her, pulled her in for a kiss. Soft and reverent like in the graveyard, filled with regrets and remembrance. 

"This body isn't very good at the touching thing," he breathed against her lips. "And I think I'm scared," he confessed. "You, you pushed me against a wall and assaulted me, but I know you're scared too."

His arms enclosed her. She rested her head against his chest. 

"I will always stop you and I will never accept your crimes. One day I might have no choice but to kill you, and it would break my hearts." 

"Because you love me," she finished for him.


End file.
